


Trouble Seems to Follow

by Coyacoonadillo



Series: The Young Punk Chronicles [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blackwatch Jesse McCree, Blackwatch Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Blackwatch Sombra | Olivia Colomar, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Limbs, Major Character Injury, Reyes Strays, Reyes is a dad now, Whump, ever wondered how jesse lost his arm?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-01 21:04:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20264494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coyacoonadillo/pseuds/Coyacoonadillo
Summary: A Deadlock warehouse isn't as abandoned as it looks. A trap is laid for the Blackwatch team.





	1. Chapter 1

It had been a while since a Blackwatch mission had taken them to North America, surprisingly enough. Sombra leaned on the back of the pilot's seat, staring out the window at the landscape unfurling before the landing craft. 

The mission was small, check out a suspected safehouse of Deadlock while it was unoccupied, get out without being noticed. It seemed abandoned from the reports anyways. As such, she was part of a skeleton crew of Reyes, Jesse, Moira on standby and mad about it. 

"So we ain't even got a target we're lookin for?" Jesse asked with clear frustration. 

"The answer hasn't changed, McCree. No, we don't. Just looking for intel," Reyes said, sliding a hand down his face and staring at the ceiling for emotional support. 

"Commander Reyes, I'm sure we can come to an agreement in which I'd be out in the field. I'm combat-ready and can heal you all out there--" 

"Dr. O'Deorain, enough. We need someone to watch the ORCA and watch our backs, and you haven't been field tested." Moira visibly deflated, tapping her long nails on the control panel and muttering something about "a complete disgrace."

"Sombra do you have anything to add, since everyone seems to have something to complain about today?" It seemed as if the commander's thin patience were to be pricked with a pin, the fallout of the ensuing explosion would devastate half a continent. 

"No sir," she said, then paused to tap her chin thoughtfully. "Maybe we could go by Disneyworld on our way back."

"I think that's a mighty fine idea there Sombs--" 

A sharp look from Reyes shut Jesse right up. "O'Deorain, ETA?"

"Six minutes till touchdown, sir. You should all strap in in three," she said, looking back over her shoulder, then doing a double take. "Sombra get the hell off my seat before I knock you across the ship."

Sombra laughed and stepped away, grabbing instead an overhead strap for support while her commander went over the plan just one more time. 

\--

They landed in a field far from any vestige of civilization, near a strange, abandoned-looking warehouse at least two acres in size. Sombra disembarked first, activating her thermoptic camouflage and moving closer to investigate. She scanned the immediately visible area for people or traps both with the naked eye and with her readouts, flickering back into view long enough to use her floating violet screens. Again, she blinked out of view and jogged the perimeter, pausing periodically to check for more traps or people. Nada.

With a hand to her earpiece she reported, “Nothing to see. We should be alone for a while, judging by the dust and lack of traps.”

“Good, we could use an easy one,” his voice crackled back.

“Hell, there’s no signals coming out of it either. I don’t know how useful this is gonna be, Reyes.”

“Just stick to the plan. McCree, let’s go. O’Deorain, you’re eyes in the sky."

As the comm chatter cut off, Sombra hummed to herself. There didn't seem to be a way in besides through the front door, unless.

She moved several paces back, looking up at the roof. About three stories up. Shouldn't be too hard. She unlatched her translocator from her side, cocked her arm back, and threw it up to the roof. It landed with a metallic thud that hadn't stopped ringing when she activated it and rematerialized on the roof, buffeted by the wind across the plain. 

After choking down a wave of nausea she called over the comms, "Stay low. I should be able to open it from the inside. Give me a minute."

The roof was barren, dusty, sun faded, and in poor repair. Excellent. Sombra didn't have to walk far, thank goodness who knew which step would punch through rusty panels and send her hurtling towards death, before finding a panel of corrugated roofing twisted and flapping in the wind. She pushed it back a little farther, enough to peek inside. Looked empty. She tossed her translocator in and down, waited to hear an impact, and hearing no startled voices, braced herself and rematerialized down on the floor inside the building.

There was a panel near the door, conveniently enough. She raked her hand across it and watched the bay door slide open. “It’s not technically breaking and entering if I didn’t break anything, right?”

“We operate outside the system, Sombra. It’s irrelevant.”

The other two strolled in soon after, seeming to emerge from the darkness only at the last second. These black uniforms do wonders for night stealth.

“Alright,” Reyes said off comms. “We’re splitting up to cover ground more effectively. Academia is watching up top. Sombra, find whatever control room you can here and harvest whatever data you can. You don’t know if it’s important or not. McCree, start looking through the north end for anything of interest. I’ll be in the south end.”

Jesse and Sombra nodded practically in sync and looked away, Jesse to the north and Sombra scanning for a control room.

“Keep your comms on.”

“Yeah, alright _ dad _,” Jesse said with a shit eating grin.

“We’ll be back before dark, too,” Sombra said with one that was sure to match.

Reyes sighed, rubbing his temples. “Just get to work already.” As he turned and started walking away they could hear him grumbling over the comms, “It’s already night, the damn punks…”

Sombra stifled a snort, gave Jesse a sloppy salute of good riddance, then walked toward a bank of rooms. The building seemed mostly filled large, open spaces littered with shipping containers and densely packed doors along the perimeter, probably rooms. This looked to be a difficult endeavor.

For someone who wasn’t Sombra, maybe. She threw up another little violet screen which laid over her field of vision as a HUD, a visual readout of composite data collected by sensors scattered across her suit. The result, with a little tweaking, gave her a good idea of what kind of shit was in each room. Not too detailed, but a room with very little silicon and copper arranged in large geometric shapes was very unlikely to hold any computers. 

After a little walking, she was rewarded by a smallish room that fit the bill. The door was locked mechanically rather than electronically, but even that didn’t pose more than a slight inconvenience. “Hey boss, hey. Hey Reyes. Gabe. Gabi. Hey.”

The voice that crackled back in response positively dripped in annoyance. “_ What _.”

“I told you a lockpick set would be a valuable addition to my kit!” She chirped back with self-satisfied glee. “Now it’s officially breaking and entering.”

“Congrats,” the commander replied dryly. “Fucking get to work.”

“Yes, sir!”

The room laid out before her was old fashioned and low budget. Piles of paper notes were scattered all over around a single pair of old, wide LCD screens. Unwilling to deal with the assuredly agonizingly slow processor time, she inserted a local network transmitter into the dusty computer tower and threw its findings up onto her HUD. Nothing seemed particularly interesting, but she allowed her algorithms to methodically copy and sift through whatever was left.

In search of something more interesting, she tossed open every drawer in the room and found an empty stapler, an old hard drive, some worryingly old salt and vinegar chips, some paper clips, and extra staples. By the time she finished her search, the computer had been thoroughly combed for anything of interest and turned up nothing. She brushed her hand across the hard driver from the drawer to establish a connection then started the same algorithms on searching that. Letting that run, she moved slowly around the room, photographing every paper note for analysis later.

Done. And the boys nowhere near finishing their search. Ugh.

Waiting on the other two to finish their investigating, Sombra idly sifted through the files on the hard drive as they were processed and copied. All the files were supposedly deleted, but in that lazy, right click way that does nothing but allow reallocation of memory. Everything was still there, with a little digging and patience. 

Plenty of short term memory, cached images of website headers and official-looking letterheads. Mildly interesting. Discussions of weapons trafficking, mildly interesting but fully expected.

_ Delete this before leaving _.

Something caught her eye. She paused in her rapid, fairly mindless and time killing scan of the recovered documents. 

Instructions to delete this message, delete everything, wipe the hard drive. Leave the warehouse unguarded....expected investigation…

Retaliation.

McCree.

_ ...approach from the ground _. 

She tried to read more, but the file was mildly garbled by the recovery, and by the small amount of actual successful deletion. 

Sombra scrambled to activate her comms then hissed, “Guys, we need to get out of here, now.”

“Anything interesting?” Jesse drawled. 

“This is a trap, this whole thing is a trap, we need to leave, vámonos--”

“There are no traps, there’s nobody here,” Reyes said calmly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Sombra hissed, throwing the hard drive into her jacket pocket and running out of the room, making a break to weave through the maze of shipping containers, “I’m reading Deadlock communications. This was bait. They want Blackwatch, and they want Jesse. This is all a trap and we need to _ get out _ before they’re on our fucking corpses.”

Maybe she was just jumpy. Maybe she was turning tail too early. Maybe it was just a flavor of cowardice under the guise of self-preservation, but a willingness to leave before the walls closed in had kept her mostly out of trouble so far.

There was but a breath of silence in which she could feel any confidence Reyes might have in her surely slipping out the door to be blown away by the prairie wind--

“Both of you, meet me at the door.” Reyes was definitive, eliciting automatic yes-sirs from both Sombra and Jesse over the comms. “O’Deorain, full scan of surrounding area. Sombra, do you have any details?”

“Approaching on foot, it looks like. They’re unlikely to arrive in a large transport.”

Moira chimed in, “Copy that. Initiating thermal scan.”

The near-dead silence of the supposedly abandoned warehouse which had once seemed so non-threatening, so peaceful and forgotten, now echoed her footsteps like an empty tomb as she raced for the door.

“Thermal shows ten, fifteen approaching all sides, three directly approaching the bay door. I will try to land.”

The sound of two huge explosions shook the building and the cavity of Sombra’s chest. Rapid smaller blasts rattled the building and its contents around her, leaving her ears ringing and heart racing.

“Moira, check in!” Reyes called over the comms before the blasts could even begin to subside, an edge to his voice like teeth tearing flesh.

“They’ve got anti-aircraft. I can’t land yet, but I may be able to fix that from up here. If you idiots can do anything about them that would be _ delightful _.” 

Reyes’s sigh of relief was audible, but Sombra’s own relief was short lived. “Keep the ORCA out of their range. We’ll try and handle them down here.”

Another sharp turn around a shipping container. Sombra considered tossing her translocator on top of one and running across the tops, but the resulting disorientation and nausea would slow her down too much and there was no telling how far she’d make it before having to jump down or translocate again. And plenty were stacked precariously, not something she wanted to run across. Around another corner she nearly ran face first into Jesse, who grabbed his hat and stumbled back.

“Gabe should already be at the door,” he said, drawing his revolver and reholstering it, leaving a hand on the grip. Sombra mirrored the motion, drawing her own lightweight submachine gun and testing its weight, then put it away and started running again. 

The distinctive sound of a shotgun blast all but confirmed Jesse’s assumption. 

“We’ll meet him there, clear the area to land, and then get the hell out of here,” Sombra said breathlessly. “What the hell are they so twisted up about you for anyways?”

Before she could get an answer Jesse was cut off by a high pitched whistle, rapid beeping, and then chaos.

The universe seemed to crack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pacing? sounds fake but ok  
highest of keys i forgot genji was canonically in blackwatch oops. also ive technically fulfilled my moira acknowledgement requirement.  
\---  
I haven't given up on writing Young Punks, i just had a plot bunny I had to get out of my head. next chapter is like. nearly done I'm just Very Slow And Easily Distracted.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We can’t both sit here and wait for help. What the hell do you have in mind, sawin’ off my arm and hopin’ I don’t bleed out?”  
"...you got a better plan?"

First she was blind, then she was deaf. 

She was on her back. 

Her head hurt. 

She wanted to puke. 

On reflex she tried to pull up a screen of readouts, something to make sense as the burn across her full field of vision faded. Violet crackled and fizzled, but nothing happened. 

Everything was hot, too hot to touch, the air felt empty and dry and so so very hot. A shouting voice grew closer, louder as she regained her senses. No, that was the ringing fading to a dull roar. Jesse was yelling as he too, tried to sit up. 

"--you okay? Did ya get hurt? Sombra are you--"

"I'm fine," she wheezed, breath knocked clear out of her by the shockwave. "You?"

"Eh, más o menos. I can't get a hold of anyone, though." He tapped his earpiece. 

"The blast overloaded the damn comms, pendejo." Sombra groaned, pushing herself up onto her elbows at least. 

A dull creaking came from above, past the persistent ringing and throbbing headache. She looked up to see one of the poorly stacked shipping containers, wobbling, reverberating with the blast, tipping. 

"Jesse move move MOVE! GO!" She rolled over to scramble to her feet and run out from under the steel box. 

Jesse looked at her with a quizzical squint, then up at the container as it tipped. Slipped. 

With no time to get to his feet, he rolled to the side as far as he could, then it came down. 

The metallic clang echoed and roared almost as loud as the explosion. The air was thick with dust and debris and the smell of rust and carbon. 

Sombra shook her head as if that would clear the sound and the air. She couldn't see that damned cowboy or his damned hat, the box had to have fallen in between him he made it out from under it it was just blocking the way he made it out. No time to waste looking for a way around. She pushed herself to her feet and tossed her translocator over to the other side, rematerializing before it even hit the ground. She landed on her side and the world around her reeled and tossed and screamed, a horrible, grating scream. 

Before her on the seesawing ground was Jesse McCree, on his back and struggling violently without seeming to go anywhere. 

"Jesse?" 

The ground steadied. The world wasn't screaming. It was him, face contorted as he desperately tried to shove against the shipping container with his legs. 

They were gonna be found. The ambush party was going to slip past Gabriel, was gonna crash through the new holes in the building, find them and put them down like rabid dogs. She couldn't leave Jesse, didn't want to. 

Fuck, she wished they still had comms. 

Sombra took a knee beside him, choking down her own panic to try and calm him so she could assess the situation. "Jesse, c'mon you're gonna be okay. Cálmate, you're gonna be alright. Shhh." She waited until that horrible, hoarse shriek that turned her stomach stopped with his breath, then clapped a hand loosely over his mouth. "We're not alone," she hissed, jabbing her other thumb in the direction of distant cracks of rifles and blasts of shotguns. 

He nodded, and tried to slow his shaky breaths. 

Sombra scanned the area. Their way forward didn't seem affected by the fallen shipping container, their way back was partially blocked. And several thousand pounds of metal and stored goods had just parked themselves squarely on top of Jesse's left arm, just below the elbow. 

Fuck. 

She stood up, braced her shoulder against the metal wall of the box, and shoved. No dice. 

She readjusted her stance, and shoved, feet slipping on the dusty concrete with the force. No movement. 

She backed up until her back was against another box, then ran and threw herself at the container with all her might. The metallic thud masked the thump of her body hitting the ground before she got up again. Jesse coughed. 

She threw herself at the damn thing again, but the only sign anything had happened to it was the patch bare of dust on the corrugated steel. 

Jesse coughed again, then Sombra realized he was speaking. 

"Sombra you fucking moron, don't chew me out for hollerin' then bang a damn gong." He turned his head to the side and spat. "Keep goin' to the front, find Gabe. You might make it back before these idiots get here." 

The wild look in his eyes betrayed the truth they both knew. Blackwatch may be some high and fancy organization that likes to brandish the thought of No Man Left Behind, but they both knew better. No Man Left Behind gets more people killed, and that's why Deadlock and Los Muertos would both leave behind those who fell behind. 

Sometimes with the mercy of a shot to the head first. 

"No," she shook her head, resolute. "We're both getting out of here, getting back to the base, and raiding the building for all the ice cream and whiskey it's got."

He gave a weak smile, then eyed her weapon and looked back up at her. 

She shook her head again. 

"Alright," he relented. "At least check an' make sure they're not already on top of us so we don't both get shot."

Sombra stooped to pick up a pebble from the debris. "Already on it," she said, gesturing with her free hand to activate her thermoptic camouflage and disappear in a haze of purple pixels. She scaled the piles of larger debris and climbed onto the top of the maze of shipping containers. Looking out toward the door, she saw the distant muzzle flashes that were the sure sign of a firefight, and the figure in black ducking in and out of cover. Gabriel was still fine, then. 

In the other direction she turned and saw the tops of heads moving through the maze in their direction. Like her translocator, she hurled the pebble as far as she could. It landed and rattled against metal, drawing the attention of the pursuers. 

She jumped down and kneeled by Jesse again, trying to figure out what in the absolute hell could be done. “Reyes is still up and kicking. I just bought us some time to get you out of here.”

The cowboy shifted his position then groaned, screwing his eyes up tight. “We can’t move the damn conex, we can’t both sit here and wait for help. Can't move my fingers at all, hurts like all hell, I figure it's broken if not shattered. What the hell do you have in mind, sawin’ off my arm and hopin’ I don’t bleed out?”

"...you got a better plan?" She checked for the knife at her side. Good, it hadn't fallen off in the chaos. 

He groaned again, this time in dismay, but he was already growing pale with a sheen of sweat clinging to his face. "I regret suggestin' it already."

"I was already thinking of it, amigo," she said bitterly. "No clever plans to get out of this one." She shifted her weight, looking away as if that could delay the inevitable. 

"And now you're hesitatin'." The gruff tone of exaggerated annoyance did little to disguise the edge of pain. "Don't have time to hesitate, and this ain't exactly an angle I can handle by my lonesome."

"I'm not medically trained, like at all. You know this," Sombra said, looking at the knife in her hands. 

"Yeah, I know. I've seen you put on bandaids too cattywampus to actually do anythin' and I'm actively choosin'  _ not _ to think about that right now, Sombs." He drew a hissing breath in through his teeth, paused, then said, "I'm gonna level with you here, kiddo. I'm tryin' this damn tough guy act to convince  _ both _ of us it ain't a bad idea because we don't have time to deliberate. But that resolve is meltin' faster than I particularly care to admit and I'd be mighty obliged if you hand me the knife and let me butcher the job and probably bleed out already or do somethin', dammit. It already fuckin'  _ hurts _ , it's not like you can do much worse."

Sombra nodded, shoving the sentimentality and softness down into a box. Cold, efficient Sombra was needed. The Sombra she was in Los Muertos. 

The change in demeanor must have been noticeable, judging by Jesse's reaction. A glimmer of satisfaction that his stupid pep talk had worked for at least one of them barely showed against the visceral, thinly veiled terror. No amount of natural swagger or forced machismo could hide the look of fear--fear that it wouldn't work, that something would go horribly wrong, that he would die here, that they'd both be found and killed or worse, that this Sombra above him would take that knife to his throat. 

Sombra had known Jesse for years now, hell when they first met they'd tried to kill each other. Several times. But she had never seen this look on his face, and she never wanted to see it again. It was the wrong look on Jesse Motherfuckin' McCree, the fighter, the protector, the loud, the deadly. 

She avoided eye contact and shoved the part of her that hesitated deeper into the box. 

The sound of raised voices was drawing nearer, not close enough to distinguish words and still moving slowly. 

First order of business: making sure neither of them actually died. With a little uncomfortable wrangling, she unclasped Jesse's belt and slid it off, then slipped off her jacket. She wadded up part of the sleeve then handed it to him. 

"I'm not actually gonna shove this in your mouth for you, but you're gonna want to bite down on it," she hissed under her breath as she carefully wound his belt around his bicep just above the elbow several times. 

He got the picture when she suddenly tightened the belt, biting down on her customized uniform jacket hard to stifle a shout. 

She froze, listening carefully. While the voices were still shouting, they didn't seem to notice the muffled outburst. Good, it worked. A small amount of tension left her shoulders and she continued, drawing the knife from her side. 

A hand on her wrist stilled her methodical preparations. Jesse squeezed, not nearly as hard as he should have been able to. "I don't wanna lose my hand," he whispered. 

"Yo sé."

"I can't lose my hand, what am I gonna do I  _ need  _ my hands. I can't do this job without my hands they'll leave me behind." 

Sombra didn't need to look at his face to hear the fear, couldn't bring herself to see it in his eyes. "We don't leave anyone behind." With that, she gently peeled his hand off her wrist and turned his head to the side, blocking the view as best as she could.

Then Sombra began to slice into Jesse McCree's arm, just north of his elbow. At least he remembered to bite the jacket which muffled everything. Almost everything. Over the muted shouting and cursing she could hear his other hand pounding the concrete, scrabbling for something to hold on to. She worked swiftly, ignoring the blood, so much blood, did she tie the tourniquet tight enough, cutting through flesh and sinew and around the base of the bone, no time to try and saw through bone when a joint is right there. 

His skin was sweaty and cooler to the touch than it had any right to be, and paler than she'd ever seen it. More things to try to ignore and just focus on cutting him loose. 

In trying to tune out his muffled groaning, she almost missed the voices coming closer, too close. Around the corner. God  _ dammit _ . Still not done, she set down the knife and drew her own gun with two bloody hands. With a muttered, "I'm sorry, I'll be right back," she rose and activated her camouflage, then moved around the corner to investigate. 

Immediately she was grateful she'd turned invisible, since she was face to face with a Deadlock gangster, with a tattoo like Jesse's visible on a sleeveless burly arm holding a heavy rifle. The bandana across his face concealed his expression, but he hadn't seemed to notice Sombra. He crept slowly forward, like a hunter to a fox's den knowing his dogs would keep the prey from escaping out the back.  _ Fuck _ . 

Sombra sidestepped him and giving him a wide berth, jogged to peek around the next corner. No one immediately on his six. Good. Fucked, but less fucked than they could be. As she turned back to the gangster closing in on her partner's location, she saw him starting to round the other corner, presenting a narrow target and dangerously close to spotting the cowboy. Without thinking, she decloaked. "Hola."

The Deadlock mook turned to see a woman in black appearing in a spray of violet and found himself staring down the barrel of a submachine pistol. Not for long. 

At the crack of her gunshot, he dropped backwards, blood pooling on his chest. Sombra stepped over and past the not yet corpse, taking the time to kick his gun out of reach, before jogging back to Jesse. 

"We're out of time," she said at a normal volume. There was no hiding anymore. Quickly and methodically she sawed through the rest of the flesh, shoved the bloodied knife back into its sheath, and slid an arm under the cowboys right shoulder, shoving him upright to sit. "Gonna need your help here, vaquero. C'mon, up you go." 

To her surprise, he did still have the wherewithal to get to his feet, although shaky and reliant on Sombra for most of the work. 

She adjusted the position of her supporting arm, threw her jacket over her shoulder, and started moving forward, towards the door, towards backup, towards escape. 

Between his stumbling and wordless, pained moaning Jesse groaned, "You shoulda…gotten one a Jack an' Gabe's protein shakes...if you was Gabe-size you might be able to carry me an' hustle 'stead of stumblin' around like a damn chicken what's got its head cut off. Too damn skinny, damn string bean…" He faded again into wordless groaning punctuated by random cursing and rambling. When Sombra jostled him too hard, he whimpered, and immediately concealed the small sound with a sharp inhale, but she was close enough to hear. 

Best to pretend she hadn't. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys I'm not a medical professional I'm an idiot with an internet connection so take this w a grain of salt and dont slice your friend's forearm off.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two showdowns, of a sort. Moira isn't the most straightforward of doctors.

Shouting was close behind and close ahead. Fuck, there were too many turns between here and Reyes, let alone the transport. Fuck fuck "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck," she muttered. A bullet pinged off a shipping container nearby. 

Sombra swerved to the side, pressing her and Jesse's backs against metal as a group of bandana and paisley bedecked assholes turned the corner, met with a spray of her gunfire. It slowed them down at least, but her chamber clicked open and she didn't have a new magazine readily available and she had  _ no _ intention of getting shot today. 

Without warning she reached across Jesse and blindly grabbed a canister off his hip, plugged one ear and threw the little can at the Deadlock infantry. 

She barely managed to close her eyes and turn her head before the blinding flash and ear shattering bang of the clever little flashbangs startled and stunned all those present, and alerted all those not yet present to their location. 

“Aw hell, warn a man, Sombra,” Jesse managed to get out.

While they were blinded, she was not. Slowed by Jesse’s weight she scurried forward, rounding another corner, and another, and another, ever closer to salvation.

Struggling for breath and muscles screaming, she found herself facing the open door of the warehouse, Commander Reyes engaged in a firefight dozens of yards away across a floor scattered with the debris of a crumbling building, the wreckage of an anti-aircraft turret still smoldering nearby. She could almost cry.

A bone-chilling click came from behind her head. “Not an inch, ghost girl,” a man growled. At her side Jesse bit off a string of curses with a resigned  _ fuck _ . 

As she turned her head she felt the cold bite of a barrel on her neck and stopped. “You’re that Muertos bitch,” he mused as he caught a look of her face. 

“It’s  _ Los  _ Muertos,” she said flatly. “Grammar.”

“Don’t got a quarrel with you,” he said, tipping the gun up to the sky lazily. “Ashe just wants your partner here. Got a bone to pick with a traitor and a snitch. I might be inclined to let you skedaddle on outta here if you were to just make this easy, and hand over Jesse McCree.”

She turned, orienting herself to be right between the Deadlock man and Jesse, narrowing her eyes up at him as more gangsters emerged from the shadows behind him. Three more, to be precise. “I don’t leave people behind,” she snarled.

“ _ Sombra _ ,” Jesse warned, tense all over and paler than he had ever been. 

“Collateral’s collateral. Muertos did the same to you,” the man said, giving the gun an artful twirl. “You know the risks ‘fore you join up.”

“ _ Los _ Muertos,” she repeated. 

“Sombs, we’re outnumbered.” Jesse hung his head, his hat nearly slipping off even after all the chaos it’d stuck through. 

“It’s four, I can take em,” Sombra hissed as the man in front of her chuckled. Jesse shifted his weight, his good arm tensed across her shoulders. 

“Time’s up, girlie. Say goodbye an’ hand him over or get ready to say hi to the ground,” the man said coolly as he pulled the slide on his gun, checking for a chambered round with a satisfied grin.

No time to find a fresh magazine, if it hadn’t fallen out in the chase. She drew the still-bloody knife and brandished it at the small faction of the Deadlock gang. “You’re not leaving here with him.”

“It’s your funeral,” the man said with a shrug.

“Wait,” Jesse said, looking up now but apparently quite short of breath. “Take it easy, I’ll come quiet. All you gotta do,” he continued, ignoring Sombra’s protests and snaking his good arm off her shoulders to hang down at his side, “is  _ draw _ .”

Once again, the world seemed to slow down. The self-satisfied gangster didn’t notice the one-armed cowboy reach for his gun, why would he ever expect it? Sombra knew his quirks and cocky turns of phrase, and covered her ears with both hands.

Like lightning striking in the desert, Jesse McCree whipped the Peacemaker out from his side and leveled it at the enemy before him. The gun cracked four times in rapid succession, a cornered rattlesnake striking. Four men fell to the slam of the hammer, faces no longer present or recognizable. 

Panting, he shoved the revolver into Sombra’s hands and threw his arm back over her shoulder. “Gotta move. Got two more shots.”

Sombra nodded, hooked her left arm behind him and under his arm again, and started picking their way across the debris field towards Commander Reyes, who was ducking behind a large piece of rusted roofing material and staring at them in thinly veiled astonishment. He shouted something unintelligible and Sombra tapped her ear, shaking her head. No comms. 

Even at this distance she could see him groan, then shout something else into the comms. A low, distant thrum grew suddenly louder and higher as the ORCA descended into view, unbothered by anti-aircraft weaponry. 

Unwilling to risk a sigh of relief yet, the pair of young Blackwatch agents hobbled forward hastily while their commander stepped out of hiding to lay down cover fire. As soon as they were in earshot he shouted, “Where  _ were _ you two?”

“Got cornered. Lost comms, tell Moira to be ready,” Sombra rattled off quickly.

Reyes paused and looked them over, lingering on Sombra’s bloodied hands and Jesse’s single arm, their hollow expressions and his worryingly pale skin. “We’ll talk when we’re out of here,” he said, then clicked into his comms again. “O’Deorain, prep for stabilization. We’re coming in.”

Without further prompting, Sombra made a mad break for the door and the ORCA outside, trying not to focus on Jesse’s labored breathing as Reyes fired off pot shots behind them. Everything’s going to be fine. Everything was just fucking fine.

Lifting the cowboy into the dropship wasn’t difficult as it was barely knee height off the ground, but lifting him at the shoulders prompted a croaking, pained shout made all the worse by trying to muffle himself against the back of his remaining hand. 

The moment Sombra and Reyes were also safely aboard, the door closed and the ORCA took off under automated guidance so Moira could pace in the belly of the ship between an IV stand and a tray of sinister-looking corked vials. 

Jesse laid prone and sweaty on a bench, an ammo box shoved under his feet for elevation and an IV drip of presumably saline solution in his right arm. A crinkled metallic blanket was draped over him up to the ribs, and his hat sat askew on his chest. 

“You’re having a bad day, McCree, but it is going to get significantly worse,” Moira said, looking him over before turning to Reyes. “I’m replacing his fluids, but that belt is a shite tourniquet and that blood loss must be stopped unless you have a body bag on board."

"So? Sew him up, you're a doctor," Reyes said. "Fix him." 

"I have the equipment to sew up a cut here, not a stump. I don't have any kind of anesthesia on board, cauterizing it could worsen the shock and you'd be a man down." She steepled her long fingers under her chin and looked pointedly over to Sombra, who sat cross legged on an empty bench, making and destroying small holographic shapes in her hands. 

"Now is not the time, O'Deorain," Reyes said quietly, placing a hand on her shoulder. 

Moira easily shook it off. "We have no time. He's getting the experimental treatment." Ignoring the commander's protests, she prowled over to Sombra and squatted, saying as if sharing a secret, "I know one of you scoundrels snuck a drink on board, you always do. Where."

Sombra glanced up after she finished talking with a startled and confused look. 

"Whiskey. Where. Now," Moira hissed. 

"In McCree's bag on the wall. Silver flask."

Without another word, the scientist got up and left to dig through McCree's things. Sooner than she had expected, she withdrew a stainless steel flask and sniffed the contents. 

Disgusting, strong, and importantly  _ potent  _ moonshine. Excellent. 

She stalked over to the tray of corked vials, only to be stopped by Reyes's hand to her chest. 

"You haven't tested this properly, you don't know what could happen."

"I've tested it on  _ me _ , Commander, and I know it'll do a great deal more than thumb twiddling."

The sound Reyes made could only be described as a growl. "His life is in your hands,  _ doctor _ . If something goes wrong--"

"It won't. Now if you would step aside." Without waiting, she stepped around him towards the tray to carry it back towards McCree. She tapped him on the face urgently, saying, "You're going to want to drink this."

He raised his head, blinking blearily. "Don't...need no cough syrup, doc," he drawled. "Just a...just a bandaid."

Rolling her eyes, Moira pinched his nose and poured several ounces of moonshine into his mouth, and the rest over his stump, ignoring his coughing and pained groan. 

Almost reverently, she picked up the first corked vial, containing a gold, shimmery substance. Conscious of two sets of worried eyes behind her, she said, "This would be easier with my equipment to control the flow. I don't have it, though, so this may sting a tad." With little more preamble, she poured the golden substance, viscous yet ethereal, into her left hand where it surrounded her fingers in a shimmery cloud. It truly was beautiful to behold. 

Long fingers splayed, she pressed her hand and the golden cloud to the end of the stump that still leaked blood. 

No one was prepared for the response, the way he thrashed and practically howled as the cloud went to work, stitching skin across the wound cell by cell. 

" _ Why does it burn so bad? _ " 

"Hold still--one of you hold him still!" Moira snapped. Sombra jumped up and all but ran the few steps to the makeshift table, swiftly grabbing his shoulders and holding him in place. 

The cloud slowly dissipated, the bleeding slowed but the wound still raw and open. Moira dumped the second of four vials, gold again, into her hand and pressed the cloud against the cowboy. 

As skin finally closed across the wound, Jesse fell still and his eyes closed, breathing still erratic and skin still clammy, but no longer actively at risk of bleeding out. The second golden cloud similarly faded from existence. Moira removed the belt from above his arm and dropped it under the bench, onto Sombra’s torn and discarded jacket, to be dealt with later.

After a deep breath, she said, "That's all I have. Unless…"

"No." Reyes crossed his arms and glared at Moira. "Thank you for stablizing him, but even I know you haven't tested that  _ at all _ ." Before she could retort he continued, "Sombra, help Dr. O'Deorain keep an eye on McCree. I'm going to let the base know were incoming and fill them in how I can. You  _ will _ debrief later." Leaving no room for discussion, he left the three agents alone and headed into the cockpit. 

They sat in silence for a moment until Sombra broke it uncomfortably. "He's still pale. And cold."

"Yes, well, blood loss tends to do that," Moira said, toying with the empty vials. "Why'd he come back armless anyhow?"

"He...was pinned. We didn’t have time, I did what I could.”

There was a pause, then Moira spoke without the characteristic edge to her voice, “Quick thinking, then.” She tapped her long nails on the tray, pondering the two remaining vials, filled with something deep purple and foreboding. 

Sombra made a small holographic cube, then let it dissolve in a spray of violet static. And another cube. And another. “What was the unless?”

The steady rhythm of tapping nails hitched. “What the devil is that sentence, Sombra?”

“I mean,” she said, resting her hands on her knees despite the itch to do something, anything. “Whatever it was Gabe--Commander Reyes didn’t want you to do. Could it help Jesse?”

“Hmm.” Moira stroked her angular chin, sizing up the situation. “I don’t have any more of the regenerative biotics, or I’d attempt to jumpstart his plasma production especially and make up for what he’s lost.  _ But _ ,” she picked up one of the purple vials, held between her thumb and index finger and gave it a twirl. “What I have here is meant to supplement the regenerative biotics, but it has a bit of a nasty catch.”

“How do you mean?” 

“I developed this technology for offensive use in the field,” Moira explained, holding the vial up to the light to better examine it. “It can produce more regenerative biotics if it is first used as a weapon to shall we say,  _ drain _ an enemy.” The smile she wore was sharp and bordered on the edge of inhuman. “Especially without my dispersal units to slow down the rate of absorption, I can almost see why the commander is hesitant to allow me to work. Almost.”

Sombra glanced over at Jesse again, sweaty, restless, and one-armed. “What are his chances right now?”

“Eh, I’d give him fifty-fifty,” Moira said without a trace of emotion. “He may have stopped bleeding but the shock could still kill him. You know, organ failure and the like.”

_ Put it in the box _ . Sombra took a steadying breath, in through the nose, and asked more than stated, “But if you can use that purple stuff on someone you can make more regenerative shit and he’ll make more blood? It’d work?”

“Well  _ technically _ I haven’t been given formal permission for human trials, but yes.” Moira stopped twirling the bottle and looked down at Sombra. “Are you going somewhere with this?”

“Then use it on me.” Sombra hadn’t realized her nails were dug into her knees, or that this is exactly what she meant. “I didn’t take hits like Reyes or McCree. If you use it on me you can fix him, and you’ll have your first trial out of the way. It’ll work.”

“You haven’t seen it, you have no way of knowing if it works.”

“Positive thinking, Moira.”

“It’s a weapon. It may hurt more than you expect,” Moira said, uncorking the vial.

“Hazlo.”

Moira shrugged, all angles and sharp bones, then poured part of the bottle into her right hand. A dark, deep purple like the bleeding edge of a nightmare surrounded her fingers in a cloud, and she laid her other hand back on Jesse’s arm, the slight glint of yellowish gold showing under her fingers. “Your arm, please.”

Steeling her resolve, Sombra shoved her left arm into Moira’s grasp and felt long, narrow fingers curl around her bicep. 

At first, it didn’t feel like much, just pressure on her arm and the bite of one of Moira’s stray nails in her skin.

Then it came all at once, a cargo plane slamming into her midsection and knocking her breath away. She folded in on herself, held upright only by Moira’s grasp on her arm. Her lungs felt squeezed tight, she couldn’t take breaths deep enough to satisfy, the world spun and spots crept in on her vision. She kneaded the air, as if grasping nothing in her fists could force the oxygen she needed into her body. 

It drew out, weakness radiating from Moira’s hand into her chest and arms and legs and head, then it stopped. The sapping of her energy suddenly ceased and Moira let go, only to quickly catch Sombra by the back of the shirt as she keeled over forwards, groaning and heaving for breath.

“Are you still conscious?” She asked, curiosity coloring her tone more than concern.

“Hrnnngh.”

“Well McCree is no longer at risk of hypovolemic shock, already looking hale and hearty. Can you stand?”

“ _ Hrnnngh _ .”

“Very well.” Moira half-dragged half-carried Sombra to an empty seat and strapped her in properly, as if for foul weather. “I will keep watch for you both.”

Before Sombra could give some kind of pithy response, she found herself drained, exhausted, and drifting into the comfortable darkness of sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whump for everyone yeehaw
> 
> see, i promised this would come out faster!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every action has a consequence.

Sombra woke to the clattering of metal and plastic, concerned voices shouting, and Moira hastily undoing Sombra’s straps. 

“My fuckin’ head hurts…” She rubbed her temples, bleary-eyed and skull pounding. “¿Qué pasa?”

“Welcome to the worst hangover of your life,” Moira said dryly. “Ziegler wants to check on you all, up you go.” She dragged Sombra to her feet, ignoring the indignant protests. 

At the open door of the ORCA, Jesse was on a gurney attended by several agents while Reyes shouted orders Sombra really didn’t have the energy to process. She did, however, have the energy to grab his hat from where it had been abandoned on the floor. “Hmph. Amateurs.”

She followed Jesse and Reyes to the medical bay, Moira prowling not long behind with an oddly self-satisfied look on her face. 

Angela Ziegler was waiting for them at the door and directed everyone around the bay, shuffling Jesse from the gurney to a more adequate exam table. She hurriedly hooked him up to several machines noting his vitals before conceding he was stable enough to turn her attention to her other patients. 

She gave Reyes a quick once-over, tutting like a mother hen at his scrapes and cuts. Once she directed an assistant to bandage the commander's minor injuries, she moved on to Sombra. 

"Hey, Angel Wings," she said with a sly twist to her grin as she squinted in the bright light of the room. Ugh, too bright. 

"Hello Sombra. I am glad you all made it back in one-- hmm. That you all made it back. Arm, if you please," Angela said, going through the motions of a checkup, sliding the little obnoxious device that inflates and beeps a lot onto Sombra's left arm. The doctor pursed her lips as she passed the blood spattered up from her hands to her elbows, then paused. 

"What is it, doc?" Sombra asked, tipping her head to the side. 

"Moira. What. Have. You. Done." Angela slowly turned around to face Moira, who was sorting through papers for the harried assistant. 

"What is it, Dr. Ziegler?" Moira feigned innocence by not infusing her voice with any tone. 

Angela gestured to Sombra's upper left arm while giving Moira an accusatory glare, and Sombra finally looked down at it. A bruise, a perfect handprint, unnaturally purple and dark on her skin. "You cannot just use your teammates as test subjects!" 

"Sombra agreed to the procedure. Besides, Blackwatch works differently, my dear." Moira ignored the glare Reyes leveled first at her, then at Sombra. "As you can see, it worked. She's still standing and McCree is quite stable."

Sombra toyed with the edge of McCree's hat and very much wanted to disappear. Those emotions, too, got shoved into the box. 

"Barely standing, Moira. You can't just conduct human trials in an uncontrolled environment!" Angela slowed in her tirade, patted Sombra on the shoulder and said gently, "Get some juice. I believe there is plenty of apple juice in the kitchen. The sugars will help wonderfully." Then she moved towards Moira and resumed arguing, something about "risks are too great to even  _ attempt _ …"

Juice sounded quite nice actually. 

Luckily, or maybe unluckily, Reyes pushed himself up and off the exam bench and gestured for Sombra to follow him out the door. Sombra sat the hat on the counter behind her and followed. 

Once the door of the medical bay was closed behind them, Reyes sighed. "We'll debrief after you follow the doctor's orders. Let's go." 

As they started walking, she slunk at his side, proverbial tail tucked. The hallways weren't busy and bustling at this ungodly hour, so for a time there was silence. 

"I have to ask,  _ why _ , Sombra?" He looked and sounded more exhausted than Sombra had ever seen him. "I had just told her no, what made you decide to go along with her plan? What fucking possessed you to do that?" 

Sombra kept her eyes focused straight ahead. "She said it could help. It could actually stabilize him, help his body recover," she said quietly, wrapping emotional packing tape around the box. 

"That was an untested weapon that she knowingly used on you, I could court martial her over this," he said sternly, in his indisputable Commander Of Blackwatch voice. 

"I used a weapon on  _ Jesse _ , Gabe. I cut his fucking  _ arm off. _ " She looked up from the tile ahead at him, right hand ghosting across the handle of the offending knife. 

Reyes looked down at her, furrowing his brow. Of course with Jesse coming back one armed and bloody, and Sombra covered in blood, he had drawn conclusions. But to hear it directly, it was different. He said nothing. 

"You taught us to never leave anyone behind. We both thought about it, him and me, doing it the old way and just putting him down like a fucking dog before those assholes could get to him." 

The box was bursting at the seams, and Reyes still remained silent. 

"You know why our gangs leave people behind, Gabe? Because it's too risky. There's no fucking point in not leaving him behind out there if he was gonna just die with us, so I took a fucking risk. I had to." 

The box of weak emotions, of fear and sentimentality and panic and worry, finally crumbled. Tears stung at the corners of her eyes. "I cut his fucking arm off instead of leaving him. I've shot too many friends, I can't do it again." Traitorous tears slid down her cheeks. Wiping them off with the back of her hand only wetted the dried blood, leaving streaks of red. 

The hall was still empty. 

Reyes remained silent. He seemed at a loss for words. 

"Fucking  _ say something _ , chew me out or say what I should have done, something!" 

Wordlessly, he stepped forward, closing the gap and wrapping his arms around her. That small action seemed to break something deep inside Sombra. She slumped against him, wadding her fists up in his hoodie, pressing her face into the soft material and shaking as untold months of emotions left tucked away were laid out in the open all at once. She  _ never _ shared these feelings, these weaknesses. She couldn't afford to. She didn't know what might happen. 

Something fierce and protective shot down Gabriel Reyes's spine, something more than he felt about the agents under his watch. The feeling when he watched Sombra and McCree duke it out in the gym, laughing and teasing each other, when Fareeha got accepted to her top university, when either of the two youngest Blackwatch members looked up with excitement after mastering a clandestine skill. 

Hmmph. Maybe Ana was right, he'd gone soft when he'd picked up these kids like a pair of stray dogs. 

So be it. 

Gabriel stood firm, holding Sombra to his chest like she might fall if he let go, which may just happen. For a time all he could say was, "It'll be alright. Estás aquí. Está bien." 

After minutes or hours, he couldn't quite tell, the crying seemed to have run its course. Sombra took a deep, hitching breath, and stepped backwards. "Sorry," she said. "I didn't want...I didn't mean for...that."

"It's fine." Before she could argue some sideways and unnecessary attempt to save her pride, he said, "Let's get to the kitchen, get cleaned up and get you some juice before Angela kicks both of our asses. Good plan?"

"Yeah."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and you get a whump, and you get a whump, and you get a whump, and you--  
\--  
Once again, I am not a medical professional, don't use any of this as instruction for medical treatment.


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David Hasselhoff brings everyone together in heartwarming blockbuster.

"Where the hell is Reinhardt anyway?" Jesse tried and failed to steal some popcorn out of Sombra's bowl. The dexterity on his new arm still needed some work. 

"Why would I know, I'm just here for the popcorn," Sombra said, moving the bowl out of his reach and giving it a teasing shake, rattling the disgustingly buttery popcorn. 

"Well don't tell  _ him _ that, he's excited to share this whatever with us." Jesse scrabbled to push himself up from the couch and steal the popcorn back, but it was too damn overstuffed. 

"Wait wait wait, dude, open wide!" 

"Wait wha--" A piece of popcorn that Sombra had expertly tossed landed right in his mouth, to his pleasant surprise. 

By the time Reinhardt arrived, the rec room was filled with taunts, devilishly gleeful laughter, and the crunching of popcorn. You could almost forget the brand new metal arm that supported Jesse's weight while he leaned to catch a trick shot. 

"So who is ready for Hasselhoff?" He boomed, throwing off the cowboy who caught a piece of popcorn on his ever present hat. 

Without waiting for further response, he popped in the old DVD of David Hasselhoff's performance of Jekyll & Hyde The Musical and sat down beside the two rowdy youngsters. "Ah, it is so exciting to share the art of Hasselhoff and of musical theater with the youth of today," he mused over the opening number. 

To his right, Sombra seemed actually invested in the story on screen, though she still tossed popcorn from the hoarded bowl to Jesse between her and the lieutenant, now in time with the music. 

Reinhardt shook his head. Kids these days. 

By “The Confrontation,” both Sombra and Jesse were snoring and draped across each other and Reinhardt in a gangly mess of limbs, some flesh some metallic. “They are missing the best part,” he grumbled, attempting to slide the bowl of popcorn out of Sombra’s dozing grasp unsuccessfully.

He should have seen this coming, despite ostensibly returning to his cheerful self in no time, Jesse McCree was exhausting quickly every day in the two weeks since the incident, and Sombra had taken to sleeping anywhere but her room. Usually around flopped across another member of Blackwatch if they would stand it, or himself or Ana. Genji occasionally tolerated the intrusion as long as she didn’t snore, and Reinhardt himself didn’t mind as long as she remembered to sleep on something  _ made _ for sleeping, rather than a counter or chair that might lead to back problems. 

Especially in the first week after the Blackwatch mission gone wrong, she’d done most of her sleeping near or on Jesse. Not even cuddling, in any sense, just a point of contact seemed to allow her to sleep more heavily. It seemed the same with Jesse, in any case. It was just how they slept, like a litter of pups clinging to anything familiar in the world.

Reinhardt chuckled to himself. A good musical still made him sappy, it seemed. 

A door to the rec room creaked open and Gabriel leaned in. “You showed them that same damn musical?” 

“It is a good one,” Reinhardt said indignantly. “Wonderful timing by the way, Gabriel, absolutely perfect, please come help me escape these two,” he continued, gesturing to the snoring idiots.

“Hmm...doesn’t seem like that’s in my jurisdiction,” Gabriel said with a sly smile.

Before Reinhardt could protest, the door creaked back closed. 

...No harm in watching it again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see, i promised it got better. at least for the characters lmao. 
> 
> If you liked this, please consider checking out the rest of the Young Punk Chronicles, a series of fics set in this AU.


End file.
